"This group is most likely a professional hacker-for-hire operation that are contracted by clients to provide information," Symantec wrote in a blog about the cyber group.

"They steal on demand, whatever their clients are interested in, hence the wide variety and range of targets."

Hidden Lynx shows the "tenacity and patience of an intelligent hunter" and has the "hunger and drive" to become one of the most notorious groups operating today.

Unlike other prominent hackers like Anonymous or LulzSec, who appear to be motivated more by a desire to cause mischief than gain commercially, Hidden Lynx is a professional outfit.

They are believed to act like online bounty hunters, being paid large amounts of money by clients looking to gain an advantage in commercial deals or geopolitics.

Gavin O'Gorman, senior threat intelligence analyst at Symantec, told The Telegraph: "The clients could be governments or states, it could be other corporations.

"A lot of the targets are in financial industries, especially investment banks, so it could be that people are trying to get evidence when negotiating contracts."

He said campaigns can last for months as the group penetrates the defences of their target and combs through data to find valuable information, all of which necessitates large amounts of investment.

The breadth of hacking that has been carried out by the group is exposed in Symantec's research paper Hidden Lynx – Professional Hackers for Hire.

Analysts said that attacks on local and national governments focused on the defence industry and indicated that states are paying the group to gather information.

"Targeting advanced technologies in specific areas such as aerospace would be useful in order to close technological gaps or gain knowledge of the advanced capabilities of other nation states," the report read. It has also been linked to attacks on counter-intelligence operations.

Much of the attack infrastructure and tools used during these campaigns was found to originate from China.